It's a Miracle, John Smith
by H.J. Fotemr
Summary: The Doctor needs to hide, so he's taken human form. The TARDIS worked out his new life for him at, uh, "random" to keep him away from his pursuers, the so-called Family of Blood. Hopefully, Martha will be able to get into his delusion and take care of him while they wait. Meanwhile, Earth is calling this sudden human immortality "Miracle Day." [Torchwood "Crossover"] (Haitus, brb)
1. Chapter 1

He had to do it. There was no other option. Who in their right mind would stand by, silently, as a young woman was beaten and abused—by, of all people, men whose job it is to protect innocent people like her? Not him. Not John Smith. He simply wouldn't allow it.

He thought of his conviction as he lay bleeding on the ground, his ears ringing with the angry voices of those crowded around him. He knew it was worth it. It wasn't like he had any family or loved ones to miss him, and he had never done anything with his life. He'd grown up in Bathgate, West Lothian, Scotland, just him and his parents. His mom had been a nurse, his father a postman. They both died in a car accident when he was twenty. He couldn't afford much of a funeral, working in a shop. He never left. He was only in America now because of chance; he'd won the lottery, just enough cash to move out of country, maybe start afresh.

But no, this was fine. John Smith could die content knowing that he had done so acting as a man worth being, a man with conviction. He'd seen the woman run away, so it was all worth it in the end, at least.

 _"Doctor! Oh God, Doctor!"_

A dark shape appeared over him. If he squinted, he could tell it was a woman—a young woman, maybe in her early twenties, with beautiful black hair tied back in a pony tail, a black jacket and a silver necklace over smooth, chocolatey skin... oh, she _was_ pretty. "Are you an angel?" he murmured thoughtlessly. Oh no, that was embarrassing. He didn't want his last words to be "are you an angel." Those were rubbish last words.

The woman didn't seem to have noticed. She waved away one of the police officers (was that the one who'd shot him?) and snapped something that sounded an awful lot like "I'm a doctor." Well, thank goodness. Maybe he'd live long enough now to pick better last words.

 _"...can you hear me? Doc-John, can you hear me?"_

How did the pretty lady know his name? Maybe he was still wearing his tag from work. That would be even more embarrassing. John Smith was starting to feel less okay with dying right now.

 _"We need to get him to a hospital. I don't care if you're the police! This man is going to die if we don't get him to a hospital, and I refuse to let that happen. Car. Now."_ _  
_

Someone grabbed hold of John, just under the arms, and pulled _up._ He yelped. The pain jolted him into awareness as some strangers shoved him into the back of a police car. The area was surrounded with them—strangers that is. John caught sight of flashing lights and camera phones held high. Oh, now this was just brilliant; if he died like this, not only would his last moments be embarrassing, but they'd be all over the internet. Now he really would prefer not to d— _ouch!_

The ride to the hospital was pretty much the same as those few moments: Chaotic ramblings in his head, and then a burst of pain that took longer and longer to fade. One of the policemen he'd yelled at before sat next to him with some bandages pressed against his chest, but there was still blood everywhere. The stink of alcohol on the man's breath didn't help anything.

The driver, a woman from the sound of it, kept yelling things back at them, asking about his vitals and giving orders. At one point, she asked him directly about how he felt: "On a scale of one to ten, where one is fine and ten is unbearable, how much does it hurt?"

"Ten— _AH_ _!_ T-twelve."

And it just kept going, and going, and going—out of the car, into the hospital, into surgery, and then blackness.

* * *

When he woke up, the beautiful woman was there. She was dressed the same as before, only now she wore the white coat of a medical professional. A small bit of paper hung on her neck like an ID, but it wasn't laminated, which John thought odd. It read _Martha Jones._ Sitting on a chair at his bedside, she didn't seem to notice he was awake.

"Hello, Martha Jones," he murmured. The very act of speaking hurt his chest, but he refused to show it.

Martha started. The look of relief and joy on her face made the pain seem irrelevant. "D-John, thank goodness! How are you feeling?"

For a moment, John wondered again how this Martha Jones could possibly know his name, but the longer he looked at her, the more he recognized her. His memories began to bend and fold around this woman's identity. John was very happy now that he hadn't died. "Not too incredibly terrible," he finally replied. "It's a miracle I'm feeling anything at all, isn't it?"

Martha looked shocked at the response, though John wasn't sure why. "Y-yes. I mean, that's... what they're calling it." She laughed in a casual, conversational way, but John could tell she was shaken up. "A bullet to the heart. Should have killed you instantly."

"Hold on—to the _heart?"_

Martha nodded. She scanned John with her eyes, as if making sure he was alive, then sat up straight. "Right. John, I'm sorry but I have to ask, considering the traumatic nature of the injury... do you remember who I am?"

"Yees..." John nodded slowly. "Though I didn't at first. Makes sense, I suppose."

"And... who am I? To you?"

John laughed then winced. The lady gasped, but he dismissed her concern with a grin. "Why, Martha Jones, you're my lovely fiance of course."

* * *

 _A/N: So what do you think? Should I continue? Is this idea interesting enough for you? Don't worry, it's not going to be Martha/Doctor. I keep my romances canon, but John Smith can be whoever I—I mean the TARDIS—wants him to be.  
_


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: I know it's short, but this isn't really a proper chapter—not so much as a promise that I have decided to keep writing this. I can't promise a schedule or anything, but I will keep writing. Soft/constructive criticism is welcome. I need to work on dialogue._

* * *

Martha Jones was having an anxiety attack. Her breaths were coming in short gasps, her heart seemed to be losing its rhythm, she was constantly wiping her hands on her pants, and she had to sit down—ohh yes, she was definitely going to fall over if she didn't sit down right now. Martha had never had an anxiety attack before. She had been nervous, yes, and afraid, of course. She was getting used to the adrenaline of life with the Doctor. This was different. Martha didn't like it. She made a mental note to give more attention to any future patients with anxiety disorders.

"Miss Jones?"

Martha stood up too fast, but she managed to hide the resulting giddiness well enough. "How'd it go?"

The doctor—the American doctor, not her Doctor—didn't seem to know how to respond. Her heart sank. Then he said, "Well. I mean... He's alive."

Martha gasped in relief. "Oh, thank _god._ But how is he?"

"He's unconscious." The man, Dr. Richards, wrung his hands nervously. "And... stable. I didn't want to risk removing the bullet from his heart—"

"From his _heart?"_

"Yes." Dr. Richards winced at his own indiscretion. "It's a miracle he's alive at all, but... Well, best not look a gift horse in the mouth. He survived, if just barely."

"But there's a _bullet_ in his _heart,"_ Martha repeated.

"Yes."

"How is he alive?"

Richards cleared his throat. "Well, it's all very technical. You wouldn't understand—"

"Try me." Martha crossed her arms. "I'm a doctor in training myself."

Richards gave in. "Oh, alright, well... The bullet lodged itself in his left ventricle. It's disrupting blood flow, making his heartbeat... irregular, almost nonexistent. And yet... somehow, he's alive. There's no way for us to remove the bullet without worsening his condition, although—" He shook his head. "—that might have been more merciful. We have him on morphine, not enough to sedate him, but hopefully enough to quell the pain when he wakes up."

Martha nodded and swallowed, trying to keep her heart out of her throat. "Can I see him?" she demanded.

"No, I'm afraid we need to keep an eye on him for now, and seeing as you're not family... I'm sorry, Miss Jones. Go home. It's late. You've given us your number. We will update you if anything changes."

* * *

Two hours later saw Martha striding through the hospital with a stolen lab coat and the Doctor's psychic paper hung around her neck. She'd found it in his coat pocket along with the sonic screwdriver and a red rubber ball (she'd left the red rubber ball). The TARDIS, where she'd found the coat—the brown one, not the one she had on—had parked itself quite nicely inside a closet on the second floor of an abandoned building a few blocks down. Whoever was chasing them wasn't likely to find the TARDIS.

It wasn't difficult to get through to the Doctor's room.

 _John Smith,_ Martha reminded herself. _His name is John Smith. I have to call him John. Or maybe Mr. Smith?_

As luck would have it, no one was inside. No one except the scrawny white man with faint, hardly-there freckles sprayed across his cheeks who had changed her life more than anything else ever had. They'd put him on all sorts of life support, but Martha knew that none of it should have helped with a bullet to the heart. For a few moments, she stood watching his chest rise and fall, listening to the uncomfortably erratic beeping of the heart monitor. _One heart._

After some time, Martha found a low chair and dragged it over to his bedside. She sat there with him for what felt like hours, worrying and wondering if changing him back would do any good... but she didn't know why he was alive now. Maybe the TARDIS had changed something somehow in some way that would keep him alive. Maybe changing him back would upset the balance. Maybe she wouldn't be able to get the fob watch back from the hospital staff; that's where it went, along with his pants and the rest of his clothing down to the wash. She'd been so worried about him that the fate of the watch had completely slipped her mind. She should really get it back.

 _be-be-beep_

His heart shuddered. Martha's followed suit. The fob watch looked valuable; no one was going to throw it out. She'd find it later.

There was a TV set up across from the bed. Martha found the remote and turned it on. A man, maybe in his late forties, appeared on screen in a red jacket and a vague expression on his face. A woman's voice played over it.

 _"—school teacher, convicted in two-thousand six, of the rape and murder of twelve year-old Susie Cabina."_

Martha scowled as the news anchor lady came on screen and continued talking. With all the terror she'd seen—Judoon and the Daleks and real life witches—hearing about disgusting things like this here, on Earth...

 _"'She shoulda run faster.'"_

"Ugh." Martha muted the TV and threw the remote on the bed. She didn't want to hear about that.

Another ten minutes passed. Then another. Then half an hour. In that time, Martha Jones almost had a three heart attacks: twice when the heart monitor went blank for half a second and two seconds respectively, and once when she almost fell asleep in her chair and couldn't remember where she was.

She was just thinking it might be smart to find somewhere to sleep when the shampoo commercial on the TV was abruptly cut off by what looked like the same news story as earlier. The woman was speaking with intensity at the camera. Curious, Martha turned on the sound.

 _"_ _—failed execution. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, Oswald Danes' punishment will have to wait, because somehow, the lethal chemicals successfully administered have failed to kill him."  
_

The camera was turned on another woman to the right of the news anchor. An Asian man stood next to her with his arm around her shoulders. _"I saw it,"_ she sobbed. _"It went into his arm. He was sh-shaking_ violently _. He tore the chair apart. It did something to him, but it didn't kill him. I just want this to end. I want him to end for what he did to my baby."_

 _be-be-beeeeeeeeeeeee-beep_

Martha sat frozen as another character came on screen to give commentary on what just happened. Maybe it was her lack of sleep, but she felt certain this had something to do with the man lying unconscious beside her. What were the odds of this? Well, botched death sentences weren't unheard of, but something about this felt... important.

She looked back at the Doctor. He was far from at peace. He would wince every now and then, like his dreams were hurting him. His face was clammy, his hands cold. Martha didn't want to leave him, but she couldn't just sit there. She reached over and swept his hair out of his eyes. "I'll come back."

* * *

"Right," Martha muttered to herself. She draped her new coat and the psychic paper badge over one arm. "First thing's first. Where and when are we?"

Fortunately, there was a calendar in the lobby. It read March, 2011.

"Blimey," Martha breathed. "So close to home, yet so far away. America in the future. I wonder..." After glancing around a bit, Martha walked up to the help desk, where a tired young woman sat with a book. "Excuse me."

The girl looked up. She did her best to smile. "Yes, do you need something?"

"Yeah." Martha smiled apologetically. "I was on this bus, and there was an accident—nothing too serious, but... we were driving pretty far, and I lost track of where we are. Tourist." She pointed at herself as an explanation.

The girl gave an accommodating laugh. "Yeah, I can tell. Don't suppose you were heading for Washington D.C.?"

Martha raised her eyebrows. "This is Washington D.C.?"

"Yep. City General Hospital." The girl grabbed a pamphlet from the desk. "Here's a map of D.C. if you're interested. We keep 'em for situations like this."

"Thanks..." Martha glanced at her badge. "...Cassie."

"Don't mention it."

"Now," Martha added with a charmingly awkward smile, "this is gonna sound _really_ weird, but do you know if there've been any _impossible survivals_ in this hospital recently?"

Cassie frowned. "I don't..."

"Like someone surviving a bullet to the heart, or fatal poison, or...I don't know—going into hypovolemic shock without a blood transfusion."

"There was one man," Cassie said slowly. "John Smith? The staff have been talking about him. He got shot in the heart and survived. And... I guess I heard about some man who survived a _really_ bad seizure when I came in? Brown, I think his name was. Not super miraculous, though."

"Nothing else?" Martha asked.

"No. I'm sorry... Is there a problem?"

"No. Thank you, though."

Martha went outside and took out her phone. She stared at it, her mind racing. There had to be _something_ she could do. "I _know_ the Doctor wants us to hide," she murmured, holding the mobile tight. "But this _can't_ be a coincidence. Something's going on." She exhaled slowly. "But who to call?"

As if in response, at that exact moment, the phone rang. Martha didn't recognize the number. She answered. "Hello?"

"Oh two nine, six four eight, three eleven five."

Martha's lungs stopped working. "...What?"

"Oh two nine, six four eight, three eleven five. It's a number. Call it."

 _click_

"What? Whose number? Who—hello?" Martha pulled the phone away from her face. She glanced around, half-wondering if she'd see the caller anywhere, but to no avail. Then, finally, it hit her. "That was my voice," she whispered. "My voice from the future. ...Or the present?"

She shook her head and, figuring she had nothing to lose, called the number.

 _ring_

 _ring_

 _ring_

"Hello, this is Captain Jack Harkness. Who gave you this number?"


End file.
